Van Paugam
'''Van Paugam '''is a Chicago-based DJ who creates music mixes of 1980s Japanese City Pop music along with running a 24/7 Radio of this music and many live events around Chicago. He is mainly attributed to the rise of City Pop in mid 2018, being one of the first DJs to start mixing what is now commonly called City Pop—or Japanese disco, funk, and pop music that tended to be a genre blend of many western styles of a particular era between 1979 and 1985. Van's channel previously hit 100,000 subscribers before being stricken off the site on February 14th, 2019. City Pop Mixes Over the course of his career on YouTube he created over 15 mixes of 70s and 80s Japanese Disco, Funk, Lounge, Jazz, and City Pop that attained millions of views worldwide. The mixes usually were in melancholic and contemplative themes that often dealt with loneliness, isolation, and heartbreak. Often combining poetic writing with the accompanying aesthetics and music, he became popular for the incredibly well mixed and stylized compilations that evoked a variety of moods. Much of Van's popularity came about because of his highly conceptual mixes that played with elements of nostalgia, hypnogogia, and distortion. Radio Wanting to expand music to satisfy an increasing demand, he started a radio livestream that ran 24/7 featuring all variety of Japanese 70s and 80s music. The stream's visual feed was an endless nightdrive through the streets of Japan, which became incredibly popular with Japanophiles of every national origin. Having been running for over a year, the stream became the nexus of the burgeoning scene that brought together a community based around the genre that was beginning to spread to various other social platforms quickly. Live Gigs He first ventured into live City Pop gigs in May 2018, being flown out to Brooklyn by a DJ duo called Nippon Leagues to celebrate one year of the Immersive Salaryman Experience at a club in Bushwick called Jupiter Disco, where he played a set of rare vinyl records. He eventually expanded to DJing live events in Chicago, thanks to his participation with the Japanese Culture Center of Chicago, where he is based. He continues today using an extensive library of vintage Japanese vinyl that he acquired while in Japan and through popular record selling site Discogs. Japanese Culture Center and Anri Upon coming back from his first gig in NY, he began collaborating and writing for the Japanese Culture Center in Chicago, his musings on the situations that founded the unique sound and feel of city pop fuelling a rise in popularity for him in Japan. Having reached a critical level of public awareness in both Chicago and Japan, he eventually met with famous 80s J-Pop Singer Anri, who supported his efforts in resurrecting the City Pop genre for new audiences in the West. Media Presence He has been featured in many music and culture publications for his contributions to the genre. He is credited in most of these as being the main figure in the genre's resurgence and ascension into popularity once more. Having inspired a short documentary in which he is featured, many credit his efforts in introducing City Pop to the west as one of the most important music movements on YouTube in the late 2010s. Van Paugam created a multi-media blitzkrieg on YouTube with his City Pop mixes that brought relevancy to retro Japanese music and brought recognition to the genre that was heavily sampled into Vaporwave and Future Funk in the early 2010s. Termination On February 14th, 2019, Valentine's Day, Van Paugam's channel was terminated for multiple copyright infringement claims. Actions taken against him by RIAJ, Recording Industry Association of Japan, caused his fan base to go into a whirlwind. Having been the go-to for over 100k subscribers who became enamoured with his mixes of classic City Pop, he fell into the backdrop of the scene and struggled to clean up the mess that was left after his channel disappeared over night. YouTube's failed policies and practices worked against him, and instead of RIAJ seeing his channel as an opportunity to promote the music they are protecting, they simply destroyed his channel and ignored his contributions to music on the internet and the good it created. He continues to work towards raising awareness of Japanese classics through live DJing and uploading mixes on other platforms like Soundcloud and Mixcloud. His efforts in mixing City Pop led to a rising popularity in the music that no one in Japan could have predicted, and even artists such as Mariya Takeuchi who produced Plastic Love, were surprised by the surge in interest that his channel had caused. Having reached a critical amount of interest, RIAJ, who is nearly impossible to deal with if you're not Japanese made him a target and within an hour had given him 3 strikes with no time to react. He is now rebuilding his fan base with a secondary channel and continues producing events that aim to satisfy the growing demand for the style of music that he worked years to promote tp get it to where it is today. Category:YouTube Musicians Category:American YouTubers Category:Male YouTubers Category:Users that joined in 2013